Beast of Reincarnation was provided by Fictions for review. Thank you!
When I first heard of Beast of Reincarnation, I was intrigued. Not only did it look and sound like a game that was right up my alley, but it was being developed by Game Freak, the team behind the Pokémon series. I know they have made games outside of Pokémon before, but since that is their main series, I wasn’t sure what to expect for this. This looked like a massive undertaking for the team that is known for the Pokémon games, and while there are some little hiccups and predictable areas, I had a blast with Beast of Reincarnation in the balance of its gameplay elements and story to create a compelling experience that I would happily keep coming back to.
In Beast of Reincarnation, we play as Emma, a purifier who has been tasked by the Administrator to defeat the Beast of Reincarnation. This beast comes back every 100 years, and we have the special ability to absorb Malefacts and gain their power. So, we go on a journey to find and defeat the powerful Malefacts, called Nushi, to gain their power and use it to defeat the beast and save the capital.
However, the story is much more gray than it appears, and it sucked me in. I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic settings, and this scratched my itch. The world is basically demolished, and humans are now living in colonies throughout the land. Back in the past, humans tried to separate their emotions, which led to them becoming the animals known as Malefacts that now eat people. Other humans who wanted to survive separated their souls and put them into mechanical Golems, which still roam around the world today.
I was pretty hooked in as soon as I saw the setting, as I am a sucker for post-apocalyptic worlds, but there were definitely some twists that I didn’t see coming in a story that is a little tough to follow at times. We are drip-fed information until the last 85% of the game, when we get an entire history lesson that brings everything together. The little bit of info leading up to the last 15% is still satisfying, but as soon as I heard all about the history of the world, I was a little disappointed that more information didn’t come earlier.
One of the reasons I loved the story so much is because of how perfectly the world shows it. Japan has been devastated by the Miasma and Malefacts, and we can see it throughout the different prefectures that we play through. Seeing the overgrown forest, bushes and tree roots winding across buildings, rusty colonies where the last humans gather, and signs of those trying to survive throughout all of it are apparent throughout the world.
It’s both haunting and stunning, with the unique locations of each chapter painting a picture of a world that truly stood no chance. Understanding the past of the game does provide a new outlook on how the world is right now and why, so it’s definitely worth playing until the end.
The combat in Beast of Reincarnation feels like a great combination of a soulslike and more generic Action RPG, taking the best mechanics of both and combining them into one. The actual attacking, parrying, blocking, and dodging feel like they came straight out of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, but it doesn’t feel as punishing. Parrying is a little easier, dodging covers more distance, and if we die, we don’t lose any currency we need to increase our attributes. Instead, we get experience based on the enemies we defeat and level up in a more traditional manner, which I really appreciate.
In the beginning, Emma can feel a little monotone in her combat, but this does open up in different ways. We have our standard attack, as well as being able to block, parry, dodge, and use a ranged weapon. Even though we can find different swords throughout the game, and they all have different effects that activate when you parry, it doesn’t change the way she moves or how she fights. So, we basically only use swords to fight up close, and that doesn’t change much. We also get a special attack that can slow down time so we can get in some extra hits.
However, as we continue playing, her combos open up. After each of her four sword swings, we have the option of pressing a button to go into a different combo. We unlock these as we beat bosses and absorb their powers, and can end up dealing with massive amounts of damage and bringing up their break bar to more quickly stun. Using these combos, or Blade Arts, uses the Entanglement Gauge, which goes up as we attack enemies or unlock skills that help bring it up quicker. This will be the majority of combat, though we will ultimately unlock other moves to utilize, like a slam from the air or using our hair to attack.
It definitely feels a little simple at first, but the combat is so tight and fast that I always felt engaged. Thanks to the slightly larger parrying window compared to other Action RPGs, each fight felt enjoyable despite the simplicity. However, that’s only when we’re looking at Emma, and we still have our faithful companion Koo.
One of the biggest things that shocked me about the combat was how essential it is to utilize both Emma and Koo to really overcome tough enemies and bosses. Immediately, I’m someone who tends to invest all of my time and skill points into my playable character, usually ignoring the ones that I can’t control directly. However, Koo started to feel vital to overcoming enemies and setting myself up to blow through their health.
Game Freak touted Beast of Reincarnation as having a fusion between real-time and turn-based combat. I’m not sure if I would describe it that way, but that doesn’t make the combat lesson enjoyable or unique. The system feels very similar to Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s combat, where time will slow down so we can order our ally to attack.
However, Koo’s attacks are more than just for dealing damage. Some of his skills focus damage, while others can break enemies to open them up to dealing huge damage, and a majority of them will help inflict debuffs or status ailments. Helping to inflict those ailments became an essential part of combat and was key to taking down bosses and elite enemies.
The balance of utilizing both Emma and Koo didn’t really click until later in the game as I started to unlock other ways to inflict ailments. I started to plan out my strategies, figuring out which weaknesses enemies have and utilizing the best skills and debuffs to appropriately strike them down. Even if the brake bar isn’t full, fully inflicting ailments cannot only damage them over time, but also stun them for a little while as well. The satisfaction of successfully doing this, and using a combo to deal a ton of damage in one go, always felt great.
And this was further amplified by the skill system. We will be getting tons of skill points as we kill enemies, and we can use those to enhance our combos, Koo’s skills, and give ourselves new abilities. Some of these are small and won’t see huge differences, like making some of our skills slightly faster, but there are some really helpful ones like regaining health and the entanglement gauge. There are also some essentials that I would get to as early on as possible, like generating cloaking grass around us when we crouch to more easily stealth kill enemies, or having Koo execute a second foe whenever we either perform a finisher or stealth kill. These end up costing a lot, but thankfully, we can get scale points relatively fast with almost every enemy we kill.
The tree unlocks as our attributes go up, which is directly tied to the leveling system. Whenever we level up, we can upgrade one attribute, which will affect our stats and increase things like our health, attack, defense, skill power, and critical rate. Once we reach a certain amount, we can increase our base skills to unlock the rest of the tree.
And that’s not the only way to increase our stats! There’s a whole Spirit Stone system that can push them further up, as well as give us some passive effects similar to Monster Hunter’s Jewel system. If we have multiples of the same passive effect, its power will increase. And every time we go back to our home base and rest for the night, we can make food that will permanently increase our stats. I really liked this aspect because it encouraged me to stop and go back to eat new food to push my power further up pretty consistently. It also gave me a reason to utilize the very tiny plant/chicken growing system so I could keep making new foods that will increase my stats more.
We can also enhance our equipment using the Beast of Reincarnation's currency, Amber. We can get more of this just by killing enemies or finding it throughout the world, and then we’ll have to sit down at a camp to enhance it. The system works, but I was a little bit annoyed by how slowly it unlocked. I would get a ton of materials and Amber, but I couldn’t use any of it because I had to collect specific items to upgrade our home base. These items were scattered throughout the chapters, and I couldn’t fully upgrade my weapons until Chapter 6, even though I had enough amber in Chapter 2.
On that note, using materials we collect to craft stuff is automatic and a little bit confusing. Koo will just make his own equipment using the materials we find automatically, but for the longest time, I thought I would be able to use them or use them directly to craft. It’s not a very negative thing, but it was a little confusing.
It all really works in blends together seamlessly to keep the gameplay loop going and make it feel worthwhile. I thoroughly enjoyed grinding for skill points and experience, getting new Spirit Stones to equip, finding new foods and seeds to bring back to homebase, and eating all of the food I can to bring my stats up. It was engaging and exciting, and while I have had trouble seeing stat improvements while actually in combat, I could clearly see Emma and Koo getting more powerful.
However, there are definitely a few issues that popped up as I was playing. As I got to the game, I very quickly noticed a lot of repeated attack patterns. Enemies themselves did look somewhat different, at least when it came to the Golems, but their attack patterns remained largely the same, which made them very predictable and easy to parry and defeat. This extended to bosses, where a few of them are reused in later chapters. The attack patterns never got too complicated, nor did they have a ton of variety. Because of that, I was able to defeat most bosses in 1-2 tries. I was playing on the Normal difficulty, so we could say it’s a greater difficulty for more of a challenge, but I still don’t think it should be that easy in general. It didn’t ruin the experience nearly as much for me because I really enjoyed the combat, but it was very noticeable and obvious.
And apart from eating and growing crops, there wasn’t much reason to go back to home base. Yes, we could build our affinities with our team so they research new skills and recipes quicker, but this can happen extremely fast and be maxed out before getting to the 50% mark. Otherwise, everything you can do in there is something you could do sitting down at a campsite in the world, which made the process feel a little bit more draining.
On the bright side, running around in the world and exploring is great. Not only can we lift ourselves up into the air quite high, allowing us to assassinate enemies from above more easily, but if we are on a rooftop or high platform, we can create a small bridge to jump further. There’s a lot of verticality in the movement, which I really liked. Koo will also automatically find items and enemies around us, so as long as we are exploring, we won’t miss a thing to collect. I appreciate this, since that meant I didn’t have to investigate every nook and cranny to make sure I got everything that I wanted to.
Now, let’s talk about how Beast of Reincarnation is running on the Steam Deck. I reported months ago that the game would be getting a Steam Deck version. In a way, this was further confirmed to me after I received my review copy. However, it wasn’t ready when I first got the key, so I primarily played through my desktop. However, there were a couple of updates, and I can’t say that the game has gotten better to the point where I would consider it borderline playable.
The game is very CPU-heavy, which initially led to a lot of stuttering and drops. It was initially horrible to just run around. With the new patches, most of that is eliminated, and while there are still some stutterers here and there, it’s nowhere near as bad as it was before, and I could see myself playing it this way if I had no other way to play.
We default to the Low graphical quality with FSR 1 upscaling on Performance. I was a bit surprised, considering FSR 1 has generally poor image quality compared to its newer versions, but I’d still say it looks pretty good. And because of that, most fights will stick to 30 FPS. There might be some here and there that drop a little bit, but it wasn’t enough to stop me from enjoying the fights.
This is a tough one. On one hand, I do find it very enjoyable, and the performance is great for the kind of game it is. On the other hand, there are still some issues like the drops, needing low-quality settings, and somewhat blurry visuals from FSR 1. This is the game I would give 2.5/5 stars for its Steam Deck performance, but because of the type of game it is, and how I would consider it playable, I will round up. It’s a great way to do some grinding for skill points and find everything on the map, but I could see myself playing through the entire game this way.
Beast of Reincarnation came out of left field for me. I didn’t expect the developers of Pokémon to hit all the right notes in an Action RPG that invokes combat from soulslikes into a more digestible format that will be accessible to more people. The fast-paced combat is enjoyable; Koo’s skills make it dynamic, and the abilities we can unlock can change it up completely. The repeated attack patterns and narrative structure are some sore spots, but nothing changes the fact that I loved this game and was happily able to look past the problems because of all of the good.
Despite the compromises that need to be made, I was quite happy with its performance on the Steam Deck. The game is filled with pretty large open areas, so I would consider it performing well for the type of game it is. Ultimately, even with the visual downgrades and slight stuttering, I could see myself playing through the entire game on the go, so it’s one I can happily recommend. Just be very aware that it’s not going to be a perfect experience, but it will be a playable one.
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Beast of Reincarnation is an incredible Action RPG that stunned me with its engaging combat, worthwhile progression, and surprisingly solid Steam Deck performance.
